Hot Fuzz: S*** Gets Real

Edgar Wright, 2007

4.5 out of 5 stars

From my review on Lost At Sea!

Break out your wallets, because I am back, and I’m going to tell you a little story about a movie you need to see immediately. That means immediately, like right now, before seeing Spider-Man 3 and before it gets relegated to DVD oblivion and you forget all about it. The movie is Hot Fuzz, and it is so hilarious, brilliant, and sharp that you will abruptly move to England and try at once to be BFF with director Edgar Wright.

Wright, with actors Simon Pegg (who also co-wrote) and Nick Frost, does to the buddy cop film what the same team’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) did to zombies. He crafts an homage to a film genre that he obviously loves and cherishes while at the same time making sure that the resulting comedy is also a film that can stand up proudly on its own, wearing a stab-proof vest.

Detractors will call it ridiculous, but Hot Fuzz’s over-the-top plot (an overachieving London cop gets bundled off to the country because his successes make his superiors – three amazing cameo performances - look bad) is no less fantastical and unrealistic than Bad Boys II or Point Break, films to which the characters repeatedly refer. And realism be damned, anyway. The over-emphasized, over-dramatic style of editing that characterized Shaun of the Dead resurfaces in Wright’s new film, in which ordinary events are oversaturated with heavy sound effects and quick cuts. As a result, both the style and the plot of Hot Fuzz illustrate just how funny taking yourself too seriously can be. DVD-addict Danny Butterman (Frost) is disappointed that police work isn’t as Will-Smith-Summer-Blockbuster as he thought it would be, and asks Sgt. Nick Angel (Pegg) if city cops get to enforce law in a flashier way (“Ever fired your gun into the air and yelled ‘Auughhhh!!’?”) At first, Angel is annoyed by this starry-eyed perception that his life’s work is as glamorous as Hollywood believes it to be, but by the end of the film, he’s relaxed enough to make a couple puns, brandish a couple firearms, and accept a couple stereotypes – if that’s what’s going to get him some respect. And when someone finally gets to fire their gun in the air and yell “Auughhhh!!”, you know Angel’s gotten some results at last.

The only (and I do mean only) downside to Hot Fuzz is what I am now and for the first time ever in history terming the:

Baz Luhrmann Effect*: (n) a weariness on the part of the viewer caused by a director’s persistence in continuing the same unique but exhausting editing, sound, and direction style throughout his films. Related but not synonymous to, the Christopher Guest Effect.

In other words, Wright is in danger of becoming a one-trick pony, but at this point it’s still mostly fresh, and it’s only towards the end of the film that things feel a little overwhelming and your mind begins to shut down a little. But only a little. The end wakes you up again so that you barely remember your B.L. Effect-produced fatigue because your mind is filled with this:

Danny Butterman: Where's the trolley boy?
Nicholas Angel: In the freezer.
Danny Butterman: Did you say anything like 'cool it'?
Nicholas Angel: Umm, no, not really.
Danny Butterman: Awww, shame.

*It just occurred to me that the very, very awesome and elaborate Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet reference in Hot Fuzz may indicate that similarities are intentional. Don’t quote me on this though.